Historical criticism was as yet unborn. The scholarship of the fifteenth century gave rise to the study and imitation of Sallust and Livy; and Italian writers were no longer content to register facts from day to day, unconnectedly and without order. Many wrote in Latin, others in Italian; but all sought to compose historical narratives in a more artistic, or at all events, more artificial way. They launched into exordiums and general considerations; gave lengthy descriptions, eked out by many flights of fancy, of wars they had never witnessed, and of which they knew little or nothing; they attributed imaginary speeches to their personages, and sometimes fashioned their narratives in the shape of dialogues, to increase the distance between themselves and their fourteenth-century predecessors.[3] It was a period of rhetorical essays and servile imitations of the classics, during which Italian history and literature declined, although preparing for revival in the coming age. In fact, we find the art of history notably advanced in the sixteenth century. Machiavelli, who may be styled the most illustrious founder of that art, begins with a word of blame to preceding historians exactly because "they had said little or nothing of civil discords, or of existing internal enmities and their effects, and described other matters with a brevity that could be neither useful nor pleasing to the reader." Indirectly, these words serve as a faithful portrait of the book that has proved the most lasting monument to his own fame. He inquires into the causes of events, the origin of all the parties and revolutions of the Republic; thus creating a new method and opening a new road. He reduces the whole history of the Commonwealth into an admirable unity; he rejects with profound contempt the fabulous tales bequeathed by the chronicler regarding the foundation of Florence, and throws an eagle glance on party manoeuvres from their origin down to his own day. He was the first to undertake these researches, and, notwithstanding all newer investigations, his fundamental idea maintains its value.